Charles Colson
Nixon hatchet-man who was sentenced to prison during the Watergate scandals. He was one of the last of those convicted to be released, less than 8 months later, due to "family troubles"his son had been found with $150 of marijuana and was facing trouble with the sheriff.. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2009/06/caught_on_tape.html Watergate scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate) "Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information in 1972 to Bob Woodward, who shared it with Carl Bernstein. Woodward and Bernstein were reporters for The Washington Post, and Deep Throat provided key details about the involvement of U.S. President Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal. In 2005, 31 years after Nixon's resignation and 11 years after Nixon's death, a family attorney stated that former Federal Bureau of Investigation Associate Director Mark Felt was Deep Throat. Felt was suffering from dementia at the time and had previously denied being Deep Throat, but Woodward and Bernstein confirmed the attorney's claim." Later life: "As Colson was facing arrest, his close friend, Raytheon Company chairman of the board Thomas L. Phillips, gave Colson a copy of Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, which, after reading it, led Colson to become an evangelical Christian. Colson then joined a prayer group led by Douglas Coe and including Democratic Senator Harold Hughes, Republican congressman Al Quie and Democratic congressman Graham B. Purcell, Jr. When news of the conversion emerged much later, several U.S. newspapers, as well as Newsweek, The Village Voice,[33] and Time, ridiculed the conversion, claiming that it was a ploy to reduce his sentence.[34] In his 1975 memoir Born Again,[35] Colson noted that a few writers published sympathetic stories, as in the case of a widely reprinted UPI article, "From Watergate to Inner Peace."[36]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Colson#Career_after_prison "In 1993, Colson was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, the world's largest cash gift (over $1 million), which is given each year to the one person in the world who has done the most to advance the cause of religion. He donated this prize, as he did all speaking fees and royalties, to further the work of Prison Fellowship." " After days of negotiation with Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski and Watergate Trial Judge Gerhard Gesell, Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice on the basis of having attempted to defame Ellsberg's character in the build-up to the trial in order to influence the jury against him. Journalist Carl Rowan commented in a column of June 10, 1974 that the guilty plea came "at a time when the judge was making noises about dismissing the charges against him", and speculated that Colson was preparing to reveal highly damaging information against Nixon,[38] an expectation shared by columnist Clark Mollenhoff; Mollenhoff even went so far as to suggest that for Colson not to become a "devastating witness" would cast doubt on the sincerity of his conversion.[39] On June 21, 1974, Colson was given a one-to- three-year sentence and fined $5,000.[10][40] He was subsequently disbarred in the District of Columbia, with the expectation of his also being prohibited from using his licenses from Virginia and Massachusetts.[41] Colson served seven months in Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama,[42]—with brief stints at a facility on the Fort Holabird grounds when needed as a trial witness—[43][44] entering prison on July 9, 1974,[45] and being released early, on January 31, 1975, by the sentencing judge because of family problems.[44][46] At the time that Gesell ordered his release, Colson was one of the last of the Watergate defendants still in jail: only Gordon Liddy was still incarcerated. Egil Krogh had served his sentence and been released before Colson entered jail, while John Dean, Jeb Magruder, and Herb Kalmbach had been released earlier in January 1975 by Judge John Sirica.[44] (Although Gesell declined to name the "family problems" prompting the release,[44] Colson wrote in his 1976 memoir that his son Chris, angry over his father's imprisonment and looking to replace his broken car, had bought $150 worth of marijuana in hopes of selling it at a profit, and had been arrested in South Carolina, where he was in college.[47] The state later dropped the charges.)" - ARE YOU KIDDING ME???! Marijuana gets black folx INTO Jail, and it gets FEDERAL CONVICTS OUT?!?! " Category:Neoconservatism Category:Redemption Category:Crime Category:Corruption